>> Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Banking services have come a long way in the last few years.

Gone are the days when you had to hope you were balancing your checkbook correctly- now you just enter your account information on your bank's website and you can instantly see how much money you have (or don't).

No need to worry about checks getting lost in the mail- most bills can be paid online (much to the dismay of the post office).

Credit cards can be instantly obtained with a few clicks, balances shifted to save on interest rates and limits increased.

So it only stands to reason that mortgages would follow. As I am someone who is easily frustrated by the stupidity of filling out the same information multiple times because "one form goes in the broker's file and one form goes to the lender; this form will go in your file and this form may be necessary so we need you to fill it out just in case" I am very appreciative of the fact that the SmartDoc electronic format will take all the information and use it wherever necessary- and I only have to input it once!

By using this technology entire processes are automated, some are eliminated entirely, and the closing is significantly quicker. And, as someone who has had their paperwork get held up "somewhere between Madison and Minneapolis", I love that the "human error" factor drops exponentially.

Of course this will not be for everyone but I am relatively sure that many mortgage brokers and banks will be using emortgage very soon. If they aren't already.